August 21, 2025
The way travellers plan and book trips has shifted dramatically and it’s reshaping how brands need to show up. For years, we thought about the customer journey as a funnel. Today, it’s nothing like that. Discovery is messy, fragmented, and often happens across half a dozen platforms before a traveller even gets close to booking.
That’s why we say social is now the first stop. If a traveller can’t find you in TikTok searches, if you’re not part of the conversation on Instagram or LinkedIn, you’re invisible at the moment of inspiration. And if you’re invisible there, you’re also invisible in the AI answers that come later. Because AI doesn’t just “know”, it draws on content that’s already available and structured in ways it can parse.
This is where things get uncomfortable: AI overviews are now showing up in roughly 30% of travel-related searches. For some brands, that’s meant a 30–40% hit to traffic as answers are delivered upfront. But it’s also where the opportunity lies. If your content is built to be answer-ready, whole sentences, plain language, 50-word building blocks, searchable alt text, captions built around intent, and visible human experts, you’re more likely to surface in both social and AI.
We unpacked these shifts in detail during our recent live session, looking at how discovery has evolved and sharing quick wins for travel, hospitality, and airline brands under pressure to show impact.
The lesson is simple. This isn’t about huge rebrands or throwing money at big campaigns. It’s about small, practical shifts that compound. Stop leading with sunsets and glossy mood shots. Start solving real traveller questions. Make sure your posts are as useful to an algorithm as they are to a human.
Travel will always be a human industry — people want connection, reassurance, and expertise. But discovery has changed. Social creates the spark. AI closes the loop. If we ignore that interplay, we risk losing visibility right when travellers are ready to make decisions. If we adapt, the gap is wide open to stand out.